


Centuries

by stephanericher



Series: SASO 17 [12]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:39:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: (come on come on & let me in)aohimu hockey au, in unordered shortfic





	1. remember me for centuries

**Author's Note:**

> did almost a whole board's worth of hockey fills for saso br2...
> 
> original prompt [here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22249.html?thread=11889641#cmt11889641)
> 
> couple of years back the nhl did a playoff promo with 'centuries' & that's it that's the fic

Daiki’s laugh is bright and unforced; he nudges Tatsuya with his elbow and under the table their bare knees knock together. Tatsuya uncurls his finger against Daiki’s thigh; it doesn’t yield at all beneath his shorts (even in the deepest part of summer it only gives ever-so-slightly and Tatsuya has to try).   
  
“Centuries, huh? How many years is it before they remove the ring?”  
  
(Tatsuya had known, once; he’d been able to recite the number of years until they put on a new one and how far back the current one goes but he’d just been a hockey-nut kid dreaming of the Ducks’ next win, and maybe that’s pretty close to what he is now but only in facetiously-broad ways.)  
  
“I think it’s less than a hundred,” says Tatsuya. “But that just means we have to win every year from now on.”  
  
“That’s a tall order,” says the reporter.  
  
Tatsuya smiles, camera-ready; he waits for the shutters to slow and then turns his face toward Daiki. Daiki’s looking at him, like he’s trying to remember Tatsuya hard enough that eight hundred years from now they’ll dig up his corpse and find that image etched on his brain.   
  
“You’ll get plenty of pictures,” Tatsuya says when the reporters turn, distracted, to their next victims; Daiki crosses his arms over his chest.  
  
The miniature caricature of the Stanley Cup printed on the shoulder of Daiki’s sweatshirt tugs Tatsuya’s eyes over. It’s no substitute for the real thing, only a reminder that they’re four wins away (and four losses from getting set back nearly a hundred games before their next shot), but it’s there. They’re here, as close as the Ducks have been since Tatsuya’s childhood. Daiki’s arms loosen; he drops one to cover Tatsuya’s hand on his thigh, the cracks in his palm fitting around Tatsuya’s knuckles. Tatsuya’s fingers curl into a loose approximation of his grip at the top of a stick; his other hand completes the grip where it rests on the table in response. Daiki’s eyes brush over it and Tatsuya can feel Daiki’s whole body smile.   
  
(He doesn’t need to think too hard about the way Daiki flies on the ice, end-to-end rushes and open-ice hits and dekes between the circles; it goes without saying they’ll remember Daiki for centuries if he never wins the Cup.)  
  
“They’re gonna remember you, too,” says Daiki. “So don’t go thinking.”  
  
Tatsuya snorts, and Daiki taps the C on the chest of his hoodie. It’s a mostly-fair point, and right now Tatsuya’s a little more inclined to believe, so he doesn’t argue.


	2. you look so pretty but you're gone so soon

The knife twists in Daiki’s back, or maybe it’s the extra-sharp blade of a new stick, splintering in his skin. Of all the moves they could have made, they’d traded Tatsuya across the country for little more than a handful of draft picks and a questionable contract. He’s worth way more than fucking that, way more as a hockey player alone (and then there’s the way he is as a captain and a teammate and everything else and it makes even less sense). Daiki drops his phone on the bed, the article still blaring at max brightness in his eyes. Next to him, Tatsuya’s still talking in a low voice to his agent, accommodations and possible extensions (extensions? Why the fuck would he want to stay in Boston? Out of some sort of immediate spite, a fuck-you-I-don’t-want-you to their—Daiki’s, now, just his—shitty GM?) and press conferences and uniform numbers and Daiki wants to be sick.   
  
It’s not about him, though; he leans across Tatsuya’s torso, placing his head at an awkward angle on his neck but his ear right next to Tatsuya’s heart. Tatsuya sighs softly, knotting his fingers in Daiki’s hair, still long from the playoffs (it had taken him a week to shave off the beard and the exit in the conference final still stings like a slapshot to the forearm so he’s not inclined to let go now, even now they’re almost at the draft).  
  
“Yeah,” says Tatsuya. “I’ll find a place when I’m out there. Let me know if you come across any with a waterfront view.”  
  
He hangs up the phone, placing it facedown on his side table, turning the focus of both hands to Daiki’s hair. Daiki closes his eyes; he doesn’t want this twice a year during the season; that hadn’t been the deal (the hockey gods don’t deal fair, though; they don’t take promises even when they give you a good run; at least that’s how the backup goalie Daiki’s first year had described it and he might have had a point).   
  
“Fuck,” Tatsuya says, his voice harder than it had been on the phone (and it feels worse when Daiki recognizes how far Tatsuya’s come with him, how much he lets Daiki in, tones and touches and looks on his face, careful shell peeled away from him, and Daiki wonders if it will slip back on and stick like it’s been fastened with superglue when they’re far away from each other).  
  
“Fuck,” Daiki says in agreement and there’s not much more to say (Tatsuya’s kiss, bruising and brittle, says it all).


	3. mummified my teenage dreams

He’d gotten texts from no less than five (ex-)teammates about how they’d get him back, even if they were followed by “haha see you in the finals” and the weight of the combination, their childish faith (they’d all come up from the A or juniors since he was named captain, and on the list of things that make him feel so fucking old this is at the top, right behind the way his knees creak sometimes and the season feels endless in a not-straight-up-good way and the bruises don’t fade nearly so quick).   
  
Either way, they don’t have him. They have the hotshot eighteen-year-old defenseman (NHL-ready, supposedly) who they’d gotten with the three overall, which makes sense from a hockey perspective (they’ve got a glut at forward, and rolling two and a half lines instead of three when you’ve got an actual top-four on defense is a better strategy), and so does the pick swap and the cap relief the Ducks had given Tatsuya’s new team.  
  
It doesn’t feel like his, the way the Ducks always did. He doesn’t come in with franchise knowledge, the dubious honor and weight of being a top prospect. For the first time in years, there’s no letter on his chest; it’s stupid how empty it feels (this isn’t his team; even if he’s hear for five years it probably won’t feel like it). He laughs and jokes with the media; he tries to fit in on the second line; he goes home to an empty apartment right on Revere Beach and throws his clothes back into the suitcase and thinks about calling Daiki.  
  
Tonight, Daiki calls him first, before he falls asleep deciding, hovering his hand on the screen until it goes dark.   
  
“Hey,” Daiki says, clearing his throat.  
  
“Hey,” says Tatsuya, rolling over on the empty bed.   
  
Daiki doesn’t tell him about the kids making progress in preseason games (Tatsuya catches the highlights and it still hurts less); he doesn’t talk about the (well-deserved) C he wears. Tatsuya doesn’t tell him how shitty and weird he feels, because talking about nothing for a bit makes him feel a little better by the end (he tells himself to let go, before Daiki does, but then Daiki squeezes his hand harder and he doesn’t fucking want to).  
  
They don’t talk about how Tatsuya had finally let his dreams feel real, captain of the only team he’s ever loved, and how he’d plunged those dreams down into the sand (not the sands back home, Zuma or Redondo or Manhattan, but right here in Revere where the sand will meet the snow soon enough) over the summer and they’ve only now stopped struggling, harder to bury than they were to keep back. They don’t talk about the time difference, how the real season’s going to make it hurt more. They try to keep it working, because they’re both too stubborn and it’s too early to quit (but sometime soon it might not be).   
  
Tatsuya closes his eyes, listens to the familiar patter of Daiki’s voice, the traffic in the background flowing in through the open window, the familiar sounds of rush hour he won’t hear until nearly this time next year, and wonders when the hurt won’t sting so sharp.


	4. just one mistake is all it will take

They lose the cup on a bad bounce. That’s what they say, officially; that’s how it goes down in the papers. It’s easy to blame the moment, but it’s more true to say they shouldn’t have let Florida push them to that point in the first place, that they lost the cup when they let Game Six go to overtime and before that when they’d collapsed in Game Five and couldn’t staunch the bleeding (could have gone in with the three-two lead instead of the deficit), when they’d lost the first and fourth games, when they’d let that first Game Four goal in shorthanded, when they’d taken those shitty penalties and overtaxed their PK, when they’d let Arizona take them to seven games in the first round.   
  
“They played better; we lost,” he says to the press, quiet and displeased; he’s not going to pretend to be nice and calm but he’s not going to let them see how fucking furious he is, how he’d wanted to slug the stupid smirk off their stupid agitator’s face in the handshake line but had smiled at him instead, how he wants to go out and do suicides until he can’t feel his legs or his lungs anymore but the winners are celebrating with the cup on his home ice.  
  
He’s not going to let them see it; he takes a normal shower and puts on a normal suit and his fingers don’t shake and he’s doing a damn good job, he thinks.  
  
Their goalie’s still sitting in his stall; the media are circling him like buzzards and Tatsuya shoos them off. He sits down in the next stall; the goalie looks up, his eyes red-rimmed and his face blotchy. Tatsuya claps him on the shoulder.  
  
“You’ll feel better if you take a shower.”  
  
(Not really, but maybe if he believes he will.)  
  
“I’m sorry, Captain.”  
  
“Sorry we left you out to dry,” Tatsuya says.   
  
He offers a smile, fake enough to show that part through, enough of a hint that he feels like shit, too.   
  
“Just give me a minute.”  
  
Tatsuya obliges, pushing up his sleeves. There aren’t nearly enough things to distract him here, teammates consoling each other or swearing it out, half-drowning in the showers, apologizing to the coaching staff. It fucking hurts everyone.  
  
Daiki drops a wet arm around his shoulder; if Tatsuya felt better he’d say something about the suit but it won’t land right now. Daiki leans against him, all of him still wet from the shower (towels aren’t just something you put on to look half-decent for the reporters, something Daiki doesn’t get after however-many years).  
  
“We’ll go soon.”  
  
“Where?” says Tatsuya.  
  
“Dunno,” says Daiki. “Anywhere.”  
  
He squeezes Tatsuya’s upper arm where he hadn’t even noticed it was tense (all of his body is tense, tired and barely sure it’ll hold itself together if it stops trying at a hundred percent), and as he’s pulling himself away brushes a kiss over the side of Tatsuya’s jaw, right under his beard. Grief is always selfish; it’s very likely no one’s noticed. Tatsuya doesn’t feel like batting him away, anyway; he reaches his hand back and oh-so-accidentally hooks his pinky in the edge of the towel low-slung on Daiki’s hips. He hears it fall before it does; Daiki picks it up and snaps it at him and Tatsuya almost feels a little like laughing for the first time since the game had started.   
  
“Five,” Daiki says. “Then we’re out.”  
  
Tatsuya watches his ass and thighs as he walks away; they’ll never get finer than after a hundred-plus games. He tries not to think about the Cup on the other side of the tunnel, out on the ice, and it’s a little easier than before.


	5. i never meant for you to fix yourself

The stitches are woven, ugly and black, against the tan of Daiki’s skin, a winding line like a snake, like a tattoo on a wrestler only it’s real, the skin closed over itself, fragile on Daiki’s well-muscled arm. Daiki flexes his fingers, wincing.  
  
“It’s not so bad.”  
  
Tatsuya purses his lips; as much bullshit as they both give out (didn’t hit me that hard, I’m okay, that’s only three Advil, it’s a trick of the light not a bruise) Daiki’s just taken another painkiller and it’s not supposed to hurt that much after the surgery, not until he starts working it out and back to form (weeks away). He wants to run his fingertips over the rough line, before the scar forms like a mountain range, light and the wrong kind of shining.   
  
Daiki locks their fingers together, pulling on Tatsuya’s t-shirt near the neckline. Tatsuya obliges, kisses his dry mouth and slightly-lolling tongue. They’re both tired, but only Daiki gets to rest (the reward, if there is one, of injury, Tatsuya supposes).  
  
“C’mere, stay,” says Daiki, because he knows Tatsuya never will.  
  
Tatsuya slides into bed next to him, over the covers, pulling them around Daiki. “Can I get you anything?”  
  
“Hmm,” says Daiki, lazy smile crossing his face.  
  
Tatsuya kisses him again, Daiki’s mouth loose and open like he’s still got his mouth guard in (though there’s no rubber shield between Tatsuya’s tongue and Daiki’s teeth, the roof of his mouth). The painkiller’s definitely kicking in, and Tatsuya has a game to get changed for. Daiki’s probably going to sleep through it, but Tatsuya’s going to play as hard as if he were watching, the same way he will when Daiki’s stuck in the press box in a suit and tie, pretending not to look as restless as he’s going to feel. And still, Tatsuya’s stomach drops when he thinks about playing without Daiki. It’s still hockey; it’s still the purest form of anything, but it’s going to be a whole lot harder and the team will be spun off-kilter, weights on the wrong side of a balance.   
  
But that’s his job as captain to rectify that, even if he already misses Daiki when he’s only been out two games already.   
  
“Rest up,” Tatsuya says.   
  
Daiki smiles at him, pulling the covers up a little farther and closing his eyes. Tatsuya stands and watches until his breathing evens out.


	6. we are the poisoned youth

There is ice in their veins, ice from under their skates running through their bodies, pumped by their hearts. They were born into warm climates dreaming of the coming winters, snowbanks and indoor rinks, street hockey with hardened asphalt under the wheels of their inline skates as a temporary substitute for the real thing, the real show. Daiki’s not sure he’s ever going to meet anyone who has this kind of connection with him, for this or any other reason, and he’s pretty sure—well, maybe thinking that kind of stuff is already too much for Tatsuya, and he’s not going to chance it.   
  
There is ice in their veins where it should be too hot, flowing like a winter river in the north, and there is poison, too, Daiki thinks. There is bitterness; there is venom in the desperation with which Tatsuya takes every shift. He leaves it all out there, maybe more than Daiki had once upon a time (his bitterness is the way he sometimes wonders if he should hold back, until he remembers Tatsuya would never forgive him if he did it consciously or even not). It’s the hot acid with which Tatsuya delivers an open-ice hit, ruthless, against a guy with four inches and fifty pounds on him, the blue and black of the bruises up his leg and side, invisible under all those layers of padding but quite obviously there in the privacy of their house, in the shower, when Daiki tries to wash the skin tenderly and Tatsuya’s breath catches and he holds back the hiss of pain like a rattlesnake.   
  
It is the crunch of his knuckles against someone’s face, the snap of his shot on the powerplay, off a faceoff and straight into the goalie’s chest, the curse he wants to bark at the ice. It’s the same thing Daiki feels when he’s racing to beat an icing call and the other guy slams him head-on into the boards and he whirls around, ready to throw out a shoulder and the play’s on the other side of the net. It’s the line brawl, but that’s the opposite of poison, Tatsuya at Daiki’s back, pulling off the worst of the lot and daring him to try and punch that pretty face (one of these days Tatsuya might get into trouble, but that day keeps looking awfully far away).   
  
There is ice and there is poison and there are other things, things Tatsuya won’t let Daiki see (bares everything physically but won’t give up some thing, holding them close against the back of his mind, holding Daiki back like they’ve just dropped the gloves, circling, at arm’s length). Daiki’s not patient; he’s aggressive on the forecheck and always has been. But he can be patient; he can play the trap against Tatsuya. It’s worth waiting for.


	7. i can't stop til the whole world knows my name

Tatsuya skates around the faceoff circle, knees bent, grinning out at Daiki. Daiki swallows, adjusting his grip on his stick; this is absolutely not fair. They’re both on the wing here; they’re up against each other on fucking Olympic squads, almost surreal if it weren’t for the very real crowds banging on the glass, people with flags draped all over them, the rings under the ice, too detailed in the little flaws the zamboni can’t erase for Daiki’s imagination to have created, the feeling under his skates different but that’s just the anticipation Daiki almost feels weird about feeling.

It’s so fucking weird to see different colors on Tatsuya, like some sort of bizarro-world scenario Daiki doesn’t ever want to see long-term (unless he’s there too, unless the Ducks go back to Wild Wing or something just as weird—that would be okay; he knows Tatsuya’s got a hell of a soft spot for those tacky uniforms and anything that makes Tatsuya a little bit happier is good by him).

“Stop staring,” says Akashi, behind Daiki.

He hears Tatsuya laugh, the bastard (at least most of his teammates don’t understand; one of them asks him and Tatsuya waves it off). The refs skate up; Tatsuya takes his place next to Daiki, tapping his shin with the blade of his stick. Daiki taps Tatsuya’s back, and the puck drops.

Tatsuya all decked out in the American uniform is one thing; playing against him is another. It’s not weird so much as a puzzle Daiki’s not used to solving. He’s gone against Tatsuya in practice; they’ll go one-on-one anytime; they’d had a couple of games in high school, but none of it’s like this. It’s not in a real game, not with five other players darting around the ice. Tatsuya’s got the puck; Daiki darts in to steal but Tatsuya moves laterally, a pass (avoiding the conflict, kicking it down the road); Akashi steals it but Tatsuya moves in to hit him and Daiki’s in hot pursuit.

Tatsuya goes fucking hard; it’s different competing against him as a teammate (Daiki’s always got the edge but it always feels like he’s got to work his ass off to keep it up) and that’s never got him pressing on, on, long after he’s tapped out his energy reserves, burned them up on the shift (his face is red; he douses it with water as Daiki passes the American bench and gets barely a glimpse; he’s back to composed by next shift and Daiki wonders how exhausted he’s going to be after the game).

They have to wait for the second period to truly go one-on-one; Kagami gets a piece of a sharp pass toward the blue line and Daiki swears under his breath; Kagami’s pass goes cross-ice and over the line and out of the zone, straight to Tatsuya’s stick. Tatsuya picks it up as he picks up speed, shooting forward; Daiki’s faster and he knows it, but he’s got to get out of the traffic, legging forwards as Tatsuya gets past center ice, toward the Japanese zone. Murasakibara’s a little ways out of the crease, trying to stare him down; Daiki’s closer, closer, and finally he pivots, just as Tatsuya’s about to get the shot off. He tries to shorten the motion of his stick, but it’s quick enough for Daiki to clip the shot with his stick and send it skittering out to the corner.

“Fuck you,” Tatsuya breathes, and Daiki treasures that more than than the sweet things he’s said and meant, over the phone or next to him on the bed or across the table, more than the stick-taps to his ass in the middle of a playoff game.

Everyone else is catching up but Daiki makes a move for the loose puck; Tatsuya crushes him to the boards but it’s totally worth it (especially since he gets the pass off first). It hurts like fuck, but from Tatsuya he’d expect no less.

 


End file.
